Speaker tells inmates to ‘come back home’
JACKSON -- Speakers at Dixon Correctional Institute graduation exercises told the group of inmates Thursday that their educational experiences behind bars would give them an opportunity to escape a life of crime and incarceration.
“Education will open the doors, but common sense will keep them open,” motivational speaker Danna “Dr. Truth” Andrus told the prisoners, most of whom are serving relatively short sentences.
Andrus, from New Orleans, said the crime rate in “504 land” is out of control.
“Now that you have some education and purpose in life, come back home and help us,” Andrus said.
The Department of Public Safety and Corrections, Capital Area Technical College and state Education Department’s Special School District cooperate to offer General Educational Development equivalency diplomas, and certification in auto mechanics, auto collision repair, carpentry and welding.
Andrus said relatives and friends of the graduates in the audience are “your cheerleaders.”
“Don’t let them down,” he said.
Kay McDaniel, regional director of the Capital Area Technical College, noted that she counted the names of 55 welding school graduates on Thursday’s program. In all, the prison recognized 157 graduates, all wearing traditional types of caps and gowns seen at high school and college graduation exercises.
The vocational-technical college offers training to inmates at four prisons in its service area.
“Corrections makes us look good,” McDaniel said, noting that few who enroll in the welding courses outside of prison stay long enough to graduate.
“Why? Too many distractions,” she said.
Many of them also get enough training to find work but don’t graduate, she said.
“They don’t know what you know,” she told the welding graduates.
DCI Education Director Angela R. Day said the prison recently sent a group of welding graduates to Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes for work-release jobs.
“We’ve been told they’re some of the best welders they ever had,” Day said.